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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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HoUinger Corp. 
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LC 2781 
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THE AIMS AND METHODS OF A LIBERAL 
EDUCATION FOR AFRICANS. 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BY 



EDWAKD WILMOT BLYDEN, LL.D., 



PRESIDENT OP LIBERIA COLLEGE. 



January 5, 1881. 



CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.: 
JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

1882. 









HEW YORK PtfSL. LlBIt/ 
IM SXCHANQS. 




INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 



Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees: 

Your generous action — endorsed by the equally generous 
action of the Trustees of Donations in Boston — in electing me 
to the Presidency of Liberia College, gives me the opportunity 
of appearing before you and this large and respected audience, 
on this important occasion, to discuss what I conceive to be the 
work which lies before this institution, and to indicate the man- 
ner in which it shall be my endeavor to discharge the respon- 
sible duties which the situation imposes. 

A college in West Africa, for the education of African youth 
by African instructors, under a Christian government con- 
ducted by Negroes, is something so unique in the history c 
Christian civilization, that wherever, in the civilized world, tl 
intelligence of the existence of such an institution is carric 
there will be curiosity if not anxiety as to its character, its 
work, and its prospects. A college suited in all respects to the 
exigencies of this nation and to the needs of the race cannot 
come into existence all at once. It must be the result of years 
of experience, of trial, of experiment. 

Every thinking man will allow that all we have been doing 
in this country so far, whether in church, in state, or in school, 
(our forms of religion, our politics, our literature — such as it 
is) is only temporary and transitional. When we advance 
into Africa truly, and become one with the great tribes on the 
continent, these things will take the form which the genius of 
the race shall prescribe. 




The civilization of that vast population, untouched by foreign 
influence, not yet affected by European habits, is not to be or- 
ganized according to foreign patterns, but will organize itself 
according to the nature of the people and tlie country. Noth- 
ing that we are doing now can be absolute or permanent, be- 
cause nothing is normal or regular. Everything is provisional 
or tentative. 

The College is only a machine, an instrument to assist in 
carrying forward our regular work, — devised not only for intel- i 
lectual ends but for social purposes, for religious duty, for j 
patriotic aims, for racial development ; and when as an instru- 
ment, as a means, it fails, for any reason whatever, to fulfil its 
legitimate functions, it is the duty of the country, as well as the 
interest of the country, to see that it is stimulated into health- | 
ful activity, or, if this is impossible, to see that it is set aside ■ 
as a pernicious obstruction. We cannot afford to waste time j 
in dealing with insoluble problems under impossible conditions. I 
vWhen the College was first founded, according to the generous j 
^leoaception of our friends abroad, they probably supposed that i 
they were founding an institution to be at once complete in its ■ 
appointments, and to go on working regularly and effectively j 
s colleges in countries where people have come to understand, 
'om years of experience and trial, their intellectual, social, ] 

id political needs, and the methods for supplying those needs ; j 

d in their efforts to assist us to become sharers in the ad- 
vantages of their civilization, they have aimed to establish i 
institutions a priori for our development. That is, they have, i 
by a course of reasoning natural to them, concluded that cer- \ 
tain methods and agencies which have been successful among ' 
themselves must be successful among Africans. They have on | 
general considerations come to certain conclusions as to what | 
ought to apply to us. They have not, perhaps, sufficiently 
borne in mind that a college in a new country and among an I 
inexperienced people must be, at least in the earlier periods of i 
its existence, different from a college in an old country and j 
among a people who understand themselves and their work ; i 
but, from the little experience we have had on this side of the i 



\ 



water, we have learned enough to know that no a 'priori ar- 
rangements can be successfully employed in the promotion of 
our progress. We are arriving at the principles necessary for 
our guidance, through experience, through difficulties, through 
failures. The process is slow and sometimes discouraging, but 
after a while we shall reach the true methods of growth for us. 
The work of a college like ours, and among a people like our 
people, must be at first generative. It must create a sentiment 
favorable to its existence. It must generate the intellectual 
and moral state in the community which will give it not only 
a congenial atmosphere in which to thrive, but food and nutri- 
ment for its enlargement and growth ; and out of this will 
naturally come the material conditions of its success. 

Liberia College has gone through one stage of experience. 
We are to-day at the threshold of another. It has, to a great 
extent, created a public sentiment in its favor ; but it has not yet 
done its generative work. It is now proposed to take a new de- 
parture and, by a system of instruction more suited to the neces- 
sities of the country and the race, — that is to s ay, mo jio, suited 
\q the development of the ind ividuality and manhood of th e 
African, — to bring the institution more within the scope of the 
co-operation and enthusiasm of the people. It is proposed also, 
as soon as we can command the necessary means, to remove 
the College operations to an interior site, where health of body, 
the indispensable condition of health of mind, can be secured ; 
where the students may devote a portion of their time to man- 
ual labor in the cultivation of the fertile lands which will be 
accessible, and thus assist in procuring the means from the soil 
for meeting a large part of the necessary expenses ; and where 
access to the institution will be convenient to the aborigines. 
The work immediately before us, then, is one of reconstruc- 
tion, and the usual difficulties that attend reconstruction of any 
sort beset our first step. The people generally are not yet pre- 
pared to understand their own interest in the great work to be 
done for themselves and their children, and the part they should 
take in it ; and we shall be obliged to work for some time to 
come, not only without the popular sympathy we ought to have, 
but with utterly inadequate resources. 




6 

This is inevitable in the present condition of our progress. 
All we can hope is that the work will go on, hampered though 
it may be, until, in spite of misappreciation and disparagement, 
there can be raised up a class of minds who will give a healthy 
tone to society, and exert an influence widespread enough to 
bring to the institution that indigenous sympathy and support 
without which it cannot thrive. It is our hope and expectation 
that there will rise up men, aided by instruction and culture in 
this College, imbued with public spirit, who will know how to 
live and work and prosper in this country, how to use all favor- 
ing outward conditions, how to triumph by intelligence, by 
tact, by industry, by perseverance, over the indifference of their 
own people, and how to overcome the scorn and opposition 
of the enemies of the race, — men who will be determined 
to make this nation honorable among the nations of the 
earth. 

We have in our curriculum, adopted some years ago, a 
course of study corresponding to some extent to that pursued 
in European and American colleges. To this we shall adhere 
as nearly as possible ; but experience has already suggested, 
and will no doubt from time to time suggest, such modifications 
as are required b}^ our peculiar circumstances. 

The object of all education is to secure growth and efficiency, 
to make a man all that his natural gifts will allow him to 
beco ne ; to produce self-respect, a proper appreciation of our 
own powers and of the powers of other people ; to beget a fit- 
ness for one's sphere of life and action, and an ability to dis- 
charge the duties it imposes. Xow if we take these qualities 
as the true outcome of a correct education, then every one who 
is acquainted with the facts must admit that as a rule, in the 
entire civilized world, the Xegro, notwithstanding his two hun- 
dred years' residence with Christian and civilized races, has no- 
where received anything like a correct education. We find 
him everywhere — in the United States, in the West Indies, 
in South America — largely unable to cope with the respon- 
sibilities which devolve upon him. Xot only is he not sought 
after for any position of influence in the political operations of 



those countries, but he is even denied admission to ecclesiastical 
appointments of any importance. 

The Rev. Henry Venn, late Secretary of the Church Mis- 
sionary Society, writing in 1867 to the Bishop of Kingston 
Jamaica, of the Negro of that island, says : — 

" There can be no doubt in the minds of those who have watched 
the progress of modern missions that a chief cause of the failure of 
the Jamaica Mission has been the deficiency of Negro teachers for the 
Negro race" ^ 

With regard to the same island Bishop Courtenay, in an 
address before the American Episcopal Convention in 1874, 

said : — 

" We have not as yet in Jamaica one priest of purely African race. 
At the present moment no Negro in holy orders could command that 
respect in Jamaica which a white man could command." ^ 

Bishop Mitchinson, of Barbadoes, at the Pan Anglican Coun- 
cil in London, in 1878, said with regard to his diocese : — 

'' Experience in my diocese has taught me to be mistrustful of intel- 
lectual gifts in the colored race, for they do not seem generally to con- 
note sterling work and fitness for the Christian ministry. . . I do not 
think the time has come, or is even near, when the ranks of the clergy 
will be largely recruited in the West Indies by the Negro race." ^ 

But this testimony is borne not only by white people, who 
might be supposed to be influenced by prejudice ; it is the ex- 
perience alsoof all thinking Negroes who set themselves earnestly 
to consider the work and disqualifications of the Negro in civ- 
ilized lands. All along this coast, in the civilized settlements, 
there is a dissatisfaction with the results so far of the training 
of native Africans in Europe and America, and even with their 
training on the coast under European teachers. 

The West African Reporter^ of Sierra Leone, complains as 
follows : — 

1 Memoirs of Rev. Henry Venn, B. D., p. 215. 

'^ Tlie Church Journal, New York, October 29, 1874. 

3 The Guardian, July 3, 1878. 



8 : 

" We find our children, as a result of their foreign culture (we do 
not say in spite of their foreign culture, but as a result of their 1 
foreign culture), aimless and purposeless for the race, — crammed with I 
European formulas of thought and expression so as to astonish their i 
bewildered relatives. Their friends wonder at the words of their J 
mouth ; but they wonder at other things besides their words. They I 
are the Polyphemus of civilization, huge, but sightless, — cui lumen ''■ 
ademptum.^' j 

This paragraph has been quoted in several American period- ! 
icals. The American Missionary, the organ of the American | 
Missionary Association, in commenting, adds : " To some ex- ; 
tent the same holds true of Negroes from the South, educated \ 
in the North for work in their old homes." The Foreign Mis- ', 
sionary, organ of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, | 
referring to the same paragraph, says : — j 

" "We would further add that Negroes educated anywhere out of \ 
Africa labor under certain disadvantages in becoming missionaries to j 
the heathen of their own race. As foreigners, with foreign habits, j 
they fail to exert the influence wielded by Anglo-Saxons. We cannot i 
"hand over the evangelization of Africa to the colored race, except so j 
fast and so far as they can be trained, like Bishop Crowther's men, on 1 
the soil." i 

To a certain extent, perhaps to a very important extent, ; 
Negroes trained on the soil of Africa have the advantage of ! 
those trained in foreign countries ; but in all, as a rule, the in- j 
tellectual and moral results thus far have been far from satis- ' 
factory. There are many men of book-learniug, but few, very i 
few, of any capability , — even few who have that amount or 1 
that sort of culture which produces self-respect, confidence i n ; 
one's self, and efficiency in work. Now why is this ? The j 
evil, it is considered, lies in the system and method of European j 
training, to which Negroes are everywhere in Christian lands j 
subjected, and which everywhere affects them unfavorably. Of \ 
a different race, different susceptibility, different bent of char- \ 
acter from that of the European, they have been trained under j 
influences in many respects adapted only to the Caucasian race. | 
Nearly all the books they read, the very instruments of their \ 



culture, have been sucli as to force them from the groove which 
is natural to them, where they would be strong and effective, 
without furnishing them with any avenue through which they 
may move naturally and free from abstruction. Christian and 
so-called civilized Negroes live for the most part in foreign 
countries, where they are only passive spectators of the deeds 
of a foreign race ; and where, with other impressions which 
they receive from without, an element of doubt as to their own 
capacity and their own destiny is fastened upon them and 
inheres in their intellectual and social constitution. They de- 
precate their own individuality, and would escape from it if 
they could. And in countries like this, where they are free 
from the hampering surroundings of an alien race, they still 
read and study the books of foreigners, and form their idea of 
everything that man may do, or ought to do, according to the 
standard held up in those teachings. Hence without the phys- 
ical or mental aptitude for the eniEerprises which they are 
taught to admire and revere, they attempt to copy and imitate 
them, and share the fate of all copyists and imitators. Bound 
to move on a lower level, they acquire and retain a practical 
inferiority, transcribing very often the faults rather than the 
virtues of their models. 

Besides this result of involuntary impressions, they often 
receive direct teachings which are not only incompatible with 
but destructive of their self-respect. 

In all English-speaking countries the mind of the intelligent 
Negro child revolts against the descriptions given in elementary 
books — geographies, travels, histories — of the Negro ; but, 
though he experiences an instinctive revulsion from these car- 
icatures and misrepresentations, he is obliged to continue, as 
he grows in years, to study such pernicious teachings. After 
leaving school he finds the same things in newspapers, in re- 
views, in novels, in quasi scientific works ; and after a while 
— scepe cadtndo — they begin to seem to him the proper 
things to say and to feel about his race, and he accepts what 
at first his fresh and unbiassed feelings naturally and indig- 
nantly repelled. Such is the effect of repetition. 

2 



10 

Having embraced or at least assented to these errors and 
falsehoods about himself, he concludes that his only hope of 
rising in the scale of respectable manhood is to strive after 
whatever is most unlike himself and most alien to his peculiar 
tastes. And whatever his literary attainments or acquired 
ability, he fancies that he must grind at the mill which is pro- 
vided for him, putting in the material furnished to his hands, 
bringing no contribution from his own field ; and of course 
nothing comes out but what is put in. Thus he can never bring 
any real assistance to the European. He can never attain to 
that essence of progress which Mr. Herbert Spencer describes 
as difference : and therefore, he never acquires the sp.lf-rps pect 
or self-rel iance of an i ndependent contributor . He is not an 
independent help, only a subject help ; so that the European 
feels that he owes him no debt, and moves on in contemptuous 
indifference of the Negro, teaching him to contemn himself. 

Those who have lived in civilized communities, where there 
are different races, know the disparaging views which are en- 
4:ertained of the blacks by their neighbors (and often, alas !) by 
themselves. The standard of all physical and intellectual ex- 
cellencies in the present civilization being the white complexion, 
whatever deviates from that favored color is proportionally de- 
preciated, until the black, which is the opposite, becomes not 
only the most unpopular but the most unprofitable color. Black 
men, and especially black women, in such communities experi- 
ence the greatest imaginable inconvenience. They never feel 
at home. In the depth of their being they always feel them- 
selves strangers in the land of their exile, and the only escape 
from this feeling is to escape from themselves. And this feel- 
ing of self-depreciation is not diminished, as I have intimated 
above, by the books they read. Women, especially, are fond of 
reading novels and light literature ; and it is in these writings 
that flippant and eulogistic reference is constantly made to the 
superior physical and mental characteristics of the Caucasian 
race, which by contrast suggests the inferiority of other races, 
— especially of that race which is furthest removed from it in 
appearance. 



11 

It is painful in America to see the efiForts which are made by 
Negroes to secure outward conformity to the appearance of the 
dominant race. 

This is by no means surprising ; but what is surprising is 
that, under the circumstances, any Negro has retained a particle 
of self-respect. Now in Africa, where the color of the ma- 
jority is black, the fashion in personal matters is naturally sug- 
gested by the personal characteristics of the race, and we are 
free from the necessity of submitting to the use of " incongruous 
feathers awkwardly stuck on." Still, we are held in bondage by 
our indiscriminate and injudicious use of a foreign literature ; 
and we strive to advance by the methods of a foreign race. In 
this effort we struggle with the odds against us. We fight at 
the disadvantage which David would have experienced in Saul's 
armor. The African must a dvance by me thods of his own. ' 
He must possess a power distinct from that of the European. 
It has been proven that he knows how to take advantage of 
European culture, and that he can be benefited by it. This 
proof was perhaps necessary, but it is not sufficient. We 
must show that we are able to go alone, to carve out our ow 
way. We must not be satisfied that in this nation European 
influence shapes our polity, makes our laws, rules in our 
tribunals, and impregnates our social atmosphere. We must 
not suppose that the Anglo-Saxon methods are final, that there 
is nothing for us to find out for our own guidance, and that we 
have nothing to teach the world. There is inspiration for us 
also. We must study our brethren in the interior, who know 
better than we do the laws of growth for the race. We see 
among them the rudiments of that which, with fair play and 
opportunity, will develop into important and effective agencies 
for our work. We look too much to foreigners, and are dazzled 
almost to blindness by their exploits, — so as to fancy that they 
have exhausted the possibilities of humanity. In our estima- 
tion they, like Longfellow's lagoo, have done and can do every- 
thing better than anybody else : — 

'• Never heard he an adventure 
But himself had made a greater ; 



12 

Xever any deed of daring, 
But himself had done a bolder; 
Xever any marvellous story 
But himself could tell a stranger. 
No one ever shot an arrow 
Half so far and high as he had, 
Ever caught so many fishes, 
Ever killed so many reindeer, 
Ever trapped so many beaver. 
None could run so fast as he could; 
None could dive so deep as he could; 
None could swim so far as he could; 
None had made so many journeys; 
None had seen so many wonders, 
As this wonderful lagoo." 

But there are possibilities before us not yet dreamed of by 
the lagoos of civilization. Dr. Alexander Winchell, professor 
in one of the American universities, — "who has lately written 
a book, in the name of science, in which he reproduces all the 
old slanders against the Xegro, and writes of the African at 
home as if Livingstone, Barth, Stanley, and Cameron had 
never written, — mentions it. as one of the evidences of Negro 
inferiority, that " in Liberia he is indifferent to the benefits of 
civilization." ^ I stand here to-day to justify and commend the 
Xegro of Liberia — and of everywhere else in Africa — for re- 
jecting with scorn, " always and every time," the '• benefits " of 
a civilization whose theories are to degrade him in the scale of 
humanity, and of whicli such sciolists as Dr. Winchell are the 
exponents and representative elements. TVe recommend all 
Africans to treat such "benefits" with even more decided 
" indifference " than that with which the guide in Dante treated 
the despicable herd, — 

" Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda, e passa." 

Those of us who have travelled in foreign countries, and who 
witness the general results of European influence along this 
coast, have many reasons for misgivings and reserves and 
anxieties about European civilization for this country. Things 

1 Fre-Adamite Man, p. 265. 



13 

which have been of great advantage to Europe may work ruin 
to us ; and there is often such a striking resemblance, or such 
a close connection between the nocuous and the beneficial, that 
we are not always able to discriminate. I have heard of a 
native in one of the settlements on the coast who, having 
grown up in the use of the simple but efficient remedies of the 
country doctors, and having prospered in business, conceived 
the idea that he must avail himself of the medicines he saw 
used by the European traders. Suffering from sleeplessness 
he was advised to take Dover's powders, but in his inexpe- 
rience took instead an overdose of morphine, and next morn- 
ing he was a corpse. So we have reason to apprehend that 
in our indiscriminate appropriations of European agencies or 
methods in our political, educational, and social life, we are 
often imbibing overdoses of morphine when we fancy we are 
only taking Dover's powders. 

And it is for this reason, while we are anxious for immigra- 
tion from America and desirous that the immigrants shall 
push as fast as possible into the interior, that we look with 
anxiety and concern at the difficulties and troubles which must 
arise from their misconception of the work to be done in this 
country. I apprehend that in their progress interiorwards 
there will be friction, irritations, and conflicts ; and our breth- 
ren in certain portions of the United States are at this moment 
witnessing a state of things among their superiors which they 
will naturally want to reproduce in this country, and which, if 
reproduced here, will utterly extinguish the flickering light of 
the Lone Star, and close forever this open door of Christian 
civilization into Africa. 

Mr. Matthew Arnold reminds us ^ that when some one talked 
to Themistocles of an art of memory he answered, " Teach me 
rather to forget." The full meaning of this aspiration must be 
realized in the life of the Christian Negro before he can become 
a full man, or a successful worker in his fatherland. 

In the prosecution of the work of a college in America for 
the education of Negro youth, it seems to me, therefore, that 

1 Preface to Johnson's Lives of the Poets. 



14 j 

i 
the aim should be, to a great extent, to assist their power of ; 
forgetfulness, — an achievement of extreme difficulty, I imagine, | 
in that country where, from the very action of the surround- ; 
ing atmosphere, " the interstices with which Nature has pro- , 
vided the human memory, through which many things once 
known pass into oblivion, are kept constantly closed." 

In the prosecution of the work of a college for the training j 
of youth in this country, the aim, it occurs to me, should be to , 
study the causes of Xegro inefficiency in civilized^lands ; and, so 
far as it has resulted from the training they have received, to I 
endeavor to avoid what we conceive to be the sinister elements \ 
in that training. 

In the curriculum of Liberia College, therefore, it shall be ' 
our aim to increase the amount of purely disciplinary agen- | 
cies, and to reduce to its minimum the amount of those dis- j 
tracting influences to which I have referred as hindering the I 
proper growth of the race. ; 

The true principle of mental culture is perhaps this : to i 
--preserve an accurate balance between the studies which carry 
the mina ou^^ of itself, and those which recall it home again. '• 
When we receive impressions from without we must bring \ 
from our own consciousness the idea that gives them shape ; 
we must mould them by our own in divid ua lity. Now in look- j 
ing over the whole civilized world I see no place where this 
sort of culture for the Negro can be better secured than in 
Liberia, — where he may, with less interruption from surround- | 
ing influences, find out his place and his work, develop his 
peculiar gifts and powers ; and for the training of Negro 
\ youth upon the basis of their own idiosyncracy, with a sense 1 
'- of race, individuality, sejf-respect, and liberty, there is no in- 
stitution so well adapted as Liberia College with its Negro 
faculty and Negro students. 

We are often told of the advantages which students of the j 
African race are enjoying in the institutions established for 
their training in America ; but listen to the testimony of Dr. | 
Winchell with regard to the position of the students in one of j 
the best of them, namely, Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. j 
He says : — i 



15 

" I have sometimes, when visiting Fisk University at Nashville, 
looked with admiration at some magnificently formed heads which are 
there working, under all the discouragements of social repression, for 
knowledge, culture, and high respectability. My sympathies have been 
deeply moved at the evidences of their earnestness and conscious 
strength, coupled with a keen and crushing perception of the weight of 
the social ban which their race brings upon them. I will not refrain 
from expressing here the hope that such cases may receive every 
encouragement and mark of appreciation." ^ 

This testimony, coming from one who is ostentatiously anti- 
Negro, is peculiarly striking ; but one is amused at the naivete 
exhibited in the expression of the " hope " recorded in the last 
sentence by a man who has assailed the Negro with every 
weapon of antipathy which could be drawn from his imagina- 
tion, and is doing all in his power to swell the Negrophobic 
literature and to intensify a public sentiment sufficiently hostile 
to that class of people. 

It has always been to me, let me say in passing, a matter of 
surprise that there should be found white men who — in spite 
-of this anti-Negro literature, with the Notts and Gliddons and 
Winchells and Bakers to instruct them, with the prophets of 
ill on every hand — are still willing and ready to give their 
means and their time and their labor for the promotion of the 
intellectual training of such a race. It is astonishing, not that 
so little money is spent on African education, but that any at 
all is spent by men who from their childhood have been im- 
bibing from the books they read, and from their suri'oundings, 
sentiments of disparagement and distrust of the possibilities of 
the African race. 

We may conclude, then, that there is no field so well 
adapted for the work of Negro training as Liberia ; and it 
must be our aim to bring Liberia College up to the work to be 
done in this peculiar and interesting field. Now what is 
the course to be adopted in the education of youth in this 
College ? 

I have endeavored to give careful consideration to this im- 

1 Pre-Adamite Man, p. 182, note. 



16 

portant subject ; and I propose now to sketch the outlines of a 
programuae for the education of the students in Liberia Col- 
lege, and, I may venture to add, of Negro youth everywhere in 
Africa who are to take a leading part in the work of the race 
and of the country. I will premise that generally in the 
teaching of our youth far more is made of the importance of 
imparting information than of training the mind. Their minds 
are too much taken possession of by mere information drawn 
from European sources. 

Lord Bacon says that " reading makes a full man ; " but 
the indiscriminate reading by the Negro of European litera- 
ture has made him, in many instances, too full, or has rather 
destroyed his balance. " The value of a cargo," says Huxley, 
" does not compensate for a ship being out of trim ; " and the 
amount of knowledge that a man has does not secure his use- 
fulness if he has so taken it in that he is lop-sided. 

We shall devote attention principally, both for mental disci- 
pline and information, to the earlier epochs of the world's 
history. It is decided that there are five or six leading epochs 
in the history of civilization. I am following Mr. Frederic 
Harrison's classification. First, there was the great perma- 
nent, stationary system of human society, held together by a 
religious belief, or by social custom growing out of that belief. 
This has been called the theocratic state of society. The type 
of that phase of civilization was the old Eastern empires. The 
second great type was the Greek age of intellectual activity 
and civic freedom. Next came the Roman type of civilization, 
and age of empire, of conquest, of consolidation of nations, of 
law and government. The fourth great system was the phase 
of civilization which prevailed from the fall of the Roman Em- 
pire until comparatively modern times, and was called the 
Mediaeval Age, when the Church and feudalism existed side by 
side. The fifth phase of history was that which began with the 
breaking up of the power of the Church on the one side, and 
of feudalism on the other, — the foundation of modern history 
or the modern age. That system has continued down to the 
present ; but if subdivided, it would form the sixth type, which 



17 

is the age since the French Revolution, — the age of social 
and popular development, modern science and industry. 

We shall permit in our curriculum the unrestricted study of 
the first four epochs, but especially the second, third, and 
fourth, from which the present civilization of Western Europe 
is mainly derived. There has been no period of history more 
full of suggestive energy, both physical and intellectual, than 
those epochs. Modern Europe boasts of its period of intellect- 
ual activity, but none can equal, for life and freshness, the 
Greek and Roman prime. No modern writers will ever influ- 
ence the destiny of the race to the same extent that the Greeks 
and Romans have done. 

We can afford to exclude then as subjects of study, at least 
in the earlier college years, the events of the fifth and sixth 
epochs, and the works which in large numbers have been writ- 
ten during those epochs. I know that during these periods 
some of the greatest works of human genius have been com- 
posed. I know that Shakespeare and Milton, Gibbon and 
Macaulay, Hallam and Lecky, Fronde, Stubbs and Green, 
belong to these periods. It is not in my power, even if 
I had the will, to disparage the works of these masters ; 
but what I wish to say is that these are not the works on 
which the mind of the youthful African should be trained. It 
was during the sixth period that the transatlantic slave trade 
arose, and those theories — theological, social, and political 
— were invented for the degradation and proscription of the 
Negro. This epoch continues to this daj'-, and has an abundant 
literature and a prolific authorship. It has produced that 
whole tribe of declamatory Negrophobists, whose views, in 
spite of their emptiness and impertinence, are having their 
effect upon the ephemeral literature of the day, — a literature 
which is shaping the life of the Negro in Christian lands. His 
whole theory of life, quite contrary to what his nature intends, 
is being influenced, consciously and unconsciously, by the gen- 
eral conceptions of his race entertained by the manufacturers 
of this literature, — a great portion of which, made for to-day, 
will not survive the next generation. 



IS 1 

I 

I admit that in this period there have been able defences of j 

the race written, but they have all been in the patronizing or j 

apologetic tone, — in the spirit of that good-natured man who j 

assured the world that — , 

' ' Fleecy locks and dark complexion 

Cannot forfeit nature's claim." , 

Poor Phillis Wheatly, a native African educated in America, ; 

in her attempts at poetry is made to say, in what her biogra- I 
pher calls " spirited lines," — 

" Remember, Christian, Negroes, black as Cain, May be refined, and | 

join the angelic train." ! 

The arguments of Wilberforce, the eloquence of Wendell 

Phillips, the pathos of Uncle Tom's Cabiyi, are all in the same ! 

strain, — that Negroes have souls to save just as white men \ 
have, and that the strength of nature's claim is not impaired 

by their complexion and liair. We surely cannot indulge, j 
with the same feelings of exultation that the Englishman or 
American experiences, in the proud boast that — 

' ' We speak the language Shakespeare spoke, 
The faith and morals hold which Milton held ; " 

for that " language," in some of its finest utterances, patron- ] 

izes and apologizes for us, and that " faith " has been hitherto { 

powerless to save us from proscription and insult. ] 

It is true that culture is one, and the general effects of true i 
culture are the same ; but the native capacities of mankind : 
differ, and their work and destiny differ, so that the road by ; 
which one man may attain to the highest efficiency, is not that 
which would conduce to the success of another. The special i 
road which has led to the success and elevation of the Anglo- ' 
Saxon is not that which would lead to the success and eleva- 
tion of the Negro, though we shall resort to the same means i 
of general culture which has enabled the Anglo-Saxon to find i 
out for himself the way in which he ought to go. ! 

The instruments of culture which we shall employ in the \ 

College will be chiefly the Classics and Mathematics. By | 



19 

Classics I mean the Greek and Latin languages and their 
literature. In those languages there is not, as far as I know, 
a sentence, a word, or a syllable disparaging to the Negro. 
He may get nourishment from them without taking in any 
race poison. They will perform no sinister work upon his 
consciousness, and give no unholy bias to his inclinations.^ 

The present civilization of Europe is greatly indebted to the 
influence of the rich inheritance left by the civilizations of 
Greece and Rome. It is impossible to imagine what would be 
the condition of Europe but for the influence of the so-called 
dead languages and the treasures they contain. 

" Had the Western "World been left to itself in Chinese isolation," 
says Professor Huxley, " there is no saying how long that state of 
things might have endured ; but happily it was not left to itself. Even 
earlier than the 13th century the development of Moorish civilization 
in Spain, and the movement of the crusades, had introduced the leaven 
which from that day to this has never ceased to work. At first through 
the intermediation of Arabic translations, afterwards by the study of 

1 I have noticed a few lines from Virgil, describing a Negress of the lower^ 
class, which are made to do duty on all occasions when the modern traducers of 
the Negro would draw countenance for tlieir theories from the classical writers ; 
but similar descriptions of the lower European races aboimd in their own liter- 
ature. The lines are the following, used by Nott and Gliddon, and recently 
quoted by Dr. Winchell : — 

" Interdum clamat Cybalen ; erat uniea custos ; 
Afra genus, tota patriam testante figura ; 
Torta comam, labroque tuniens, et fusca colorem, 
Pectore lata, jacens mammis, compressior alvo, 
Cruribus exilis, spatiosa prodiga planta ; 
Continuis rimis calcanea scissa rigebant." 

[Meanwhile he calls Cybale. She was his only (house) keeper. African by 
race, her whole figure attesting her fatlierland ; with crisped hair, swelling lip, 
and dark complexion ; broad in chest, with pendant dugs and very contracted 
abdomen ; with spindle shanks and broad enormous feet ; her lacerated heels 
were rigid with continuous cracks.] 

But hear how Homer, Virgil's superior and model, sings the praises of the 
Negro Euryabates, who signalized himself at the siege of Troy : — 

" A reverend herald in his train I knew, 
Of visage solemn, sad, but sable hue. 
Short woolly curls o'er-fleeced his bending head, 
O'er which a promontory shoulder spread. 
Euryabates, in whose large soul alone, 
Ulysses viewed an image of his own." 



20 

the originals, the western nations of Europe became acquainted with the 
writings of the ancient philosophers and poets, and in time with the 
whole of the vast literature of antiquity. Whatever there was of high 
intellectual aspiration or dominant capacity, in Italy, France, Germany, 
and England, spent itself for centuries in taking possession of the rich 
inheritance left by the dead civilizations of Greece and Rome. Mar- 
vellously aided by the invention of printing, classical learning spread 
and flourished. Those who possessed it prided themselves on having 
attained the highest culture then within the reach of mankind." ^ 

Passing over then, for a certain time, the current Hterature 
of Western Europe, which is, after all, derived and secondary, 
we will resort to the fountain head ; and in the study of the 
great masters, in the languages in which they wrote, we shall 
get the required mental discipline without unfavorably affecting 
our sense of race individuality or our own self-respect. There 
is nothing that we need to know for the work of building up 
this country, in its moral, political and religious character, 
which we may not learn from the ancients. There is nothing 
in the domain of literature, philosophy, or religion for which 
we need be dependent upon the moderns. Law and philosophy 
we may get from the Eomans and the Greeks, religion from 
the Hebrews. 

Even Europeans, advanced as they are, are every day devot- 
ing more and more attention to the Classics. Says a very 
recent writer : — 

" We have not done with the Hellenes yet, in spite of all the labor 
spent and all the books written on them and their literature bequeathed 
to us. It has indeed been said that we know nearly as much about 
the Greeks and Romans as we shall ever know ; but this can only be 
true of the mass of facts, to which, without some new discoveries, we 
are not likely to add greatly. It is not in the least true in regard to 
the significance of Hellenic history and literature. Beyond and above 
the various interpretations placed by different ages upon the great 
writers of Greece, lies the meaning which longer experience and more 
improved methods of criticism, and the test of time declare, to be the 

1 Inaugural Address at the opening of Mason Science College, Birmingham, 
September, 1880. 



21 

true one. From this point of view much remains and will long re- 
main to be done, whether we look to the work of the scholar or to the 
influence of Hellenic thought on civilization. "We have not yet found 
all the scattered limbs of Truth ; it may be that we are only commenc- 
ing the search. . . . The Gorgias of Plato and the Ethics of Aristotle 
are more valuable than modern books on the same subjects, for the 
simple reason that they are nearer the beginning. They have a greater 
freshness, and appeal more directly to the growing mind." ^ 

If we turn to Rome we find equal instruction in all the 
elements of a correct and prosperous nationality. " The ed- 
ucation of the world in the principles of a sound jurispru- 
dence," says Dean Merivale, " was the most wonderful work 
of the Roman conquerors. It was complete, it was universal ; 
and in permanence it has far outlasted — at least in its distinct 
results — the duration of the empire itself." 

" As supernatural wisdom came from God through the mouths 
of the prophets," said St. Augustine, " so also natural wisdom, 
social justice, came from the same God through the mouth of 
the Roman legislators." [^Leges Romanorum divinitus per ora 
principum emanarunt.^ ^ 

" Roman civilization produced not only great men but good men, of 
high views of human life and human responsibility, with a high stand- 
ard of what men ought to aim at, with a high belief of what they 
ought to do. And it not only produced individuals, it produced a 
strong and permanent force of sentiment ; it produced a character 
shared very unequally among the people, but powerful enough to 
determine the course of history. . . . Certainly, in no people which 
the world has ever seen has the sense of public duty been keener or 
stronger than in Rome, or has lived on with unimpaired vitality 
through great changes for a longer time. ... Its early legends dwelt 
upon the strange and terrible sacrifices which supreme loyalty to the 
commonwealth had exacted and obtained without a murmur from her 
sons. They told of a founder of Roman freedom dooming his two 
young sons to the axe for having tampered with a conspiracy against 
the state ; of great men resigning office because they bore a dangerous 
name, or pulling down their own houses because too great for private 

1 Hellenica. Edited by Evelyn Abbott, M. A., LL.D. London, 1880. 

2 Quoted by Pere Hyacinthe in the Nineteenth Century, February, 1880. 



22 

citizens ; of soldiers, to whose death fate had bound victory, solemnly- 
devoting themselves to die, or leaping into the gulf which would only- 
close on a living victim ; of a great family purchasing peace in ci-yil 
troubles by leaving the city and turning their energy into a foreign 
war in which they perished ; of the captive general who advised his 
countrymen to send him back to certain torture and death, rather than 
grant the terms he was commissioned to propose as the price of his 
release. Whatever we may think of these stories, they show what was 
in the mind of those who told and repeated them ; and they continued 
to be the accredited types and models of Roman conduct throughout 
Roman history." ^ 

It is our purpose to cultivate the study of the languages of the 
two great peoples to whom I have referred as among the most 
effective instruments of intellectual discipline. 

A great deal of misapprehension prevails in the popular mind 
as to the utility in a liberal education of the so-called dead 
languages, and many fancy that the time devoted to their study 
is time lost ; but let it be understood that their study is not 
pursued merely for the information they impart. If informa- 
tion were all, it would be far more useful to learn the French 
and German, or any other of the modern languages, during the 
time devoted to Greek and Latin ; but what is gained by the 
study of the ancient languages is that strengthening and dis- 
ciplining of the mind which enables the student in after life to 
lay hold of and with comparatively little difficulty to master 
any business to which he may turn his attention. A recent 
scholarly and experienced writer says on this subject : — 

" Even if it were conceivable that a youth should entirely forget all 
the facts, pictures, and ideas he had learned from the Classics, together 
with all the rules of the Greek and Latin grammar, his mind would 
still, as an instrument, be superior to that of every one who has not 
passed through the same training. Xay, even the youth who was al- 
ways last in his class, and who dozed out his nine years on the benches 
of a classical school, only half attentive to his teacher and not doing 
half his tasks, — even he will surpass, in mental mobility, the most dil- 
igent scholar who has been taught only the modern languages and a 

1 The Gifts of Civilization. Bv Dean Church. New edition. London, 1880. 



23 

quantity of special and disconnected knowledge. One of the first 
bankers in a foreign capital lately told me that in the course of a year 
he had given some thirty clerks, who had been educated expressly for 
commerce in commercial schools, a trial in his offices, and was not able 
to make use of a single one of them ; while those who came from the 
German schools (and had studied the classics), although they knew 
nothing whatever of business matters to begin with, soon made them- 
selves perfect masters of them." ^ 

The study of the Classics also lays the foundation for the 
successful pursuit of scientific knowledge. It so stimulates the 
mind that it arouses the student's interest in all problems of sci- 
ence. It is a matter of history that the scientific study of nature 
followed Immediately after the revival of classical learning. 

But we shall also study Mathematics. These as instru- 
ments of culture are everywhere applicable. A course of 
algebra, geometry, and higher mathematics must accompany 
step by step classical studies. Neither of these means of dis- 
cipline can be omitted without loss. The qualities which make 
a man succeed in mastering the Classics and Mathematics are 
also those which qualify him for the practical work of life. 
Care, industry, judgment, tact, are the elements of success 
anywhere and everywhere. The training and discipline, the 
patience and endurance, to which each man must submit in 
order to success ; the resolution which relaxes no effort, but 
fights the hardest when difficulties are to be surmounted, — 
these are qualities which boys go to school to cultivate, and 
these they acquire in a greater or less degree by a successful 
study of Classics and Mathematics. The boy who shirks these 
studies, or retires from his class because he is unwilling to con- 
tend with the difficulties they involve, lacks those qualities 
which make a successful and influential character. 

It will be our aim to introduce into our curriculum also the 
Arabic, and some of the principal native languages, — by means 
of which we may have intelligent intercourse with the millions 
accessible to us in the interior, and learn more of our own 
country. We have young men who are experts in the geo- 

1 Karl Hihebrand in Contemporary Keview, August, 1880. 



■IP 
graphy and customs of foreign countries ; who can tell all about 
the proceedings of foreign statesmen in countries thousands of 
miles away ; can talk glibly of London, Berlin, Paris, and 
Washington ; know all about Gladstone, Bismarck, Gambetta, 
and Hayes ; but who knows anything about Musahdu, Medina, 
Kankan, or Sego — only a few hundred miles from us ? Who 
can tell anything of the policy or doings of Fanfi-doreh, 
Ibrahima Sissi, or Fahqueh-queh, or Simoro of Boporu — only a 
few steps from us ? These are hardly known. Now as Ne- 
groes, allied in blood and race to these people, this is disgrace- 
ful ; and as a nation, if we intend to grow and prosper in this 
country, it is impolitic^ it is short-sighted, it is unpatriotic ; but 
it has required time for us to grow up to these ideas, to under- 
stand our position in this country. In order to accelerate our 
future progress, and to give to the advance we make the element 
of permanence, it will be our aim in the College to produce 
men of ability. Ability or capability is the power to use with 
effect the instruments in our hands. The bad workman com- 
plains of his tools ; but even when he is satisfied with the ex- 
cellence of his tools, he cannot produce the results which an 
able workman will produce even with indifferent tools. 

If a man has the learning of Solomon, but for some reason, 
either in himself or his surroundings, cannot bring his learn- 
ing into useful application, that man is lacking in ability. 
Now what we desire to do is to produce ability in our youth ; 
and whenever we find a youth, however brilliant in his powers 
of acquisition, who lacks common sense, and who, in other 
respects, gives evidence of the absence of those qualities which 
enable a man to use his knowledge for the benefit of his coun- 
try and his fellow-man, we shall advise him to give up books 
and betake himself to other walks of life. A man without 
common sense, without tact, as a mechanic or agriculturist 
or trader, can do far less harm to the public than the man 
without common sense who has had the opportunity of becom- 
ing and has the reputation of being a scholar. 

I trust that arrangements will be made by which the girls of 
our country may be admitted to share in the advantages of this 



25 

College. I cannot see why our sisters should not receive 
exactly the same general culture as we do. I think that the 
progress of the country will be more rapid and permanent 
when the girls receive the same general training as the boys ; 
and our women, besides being able to appreciate the intellect- 
ual labors of their husbands and brothers, will be able also to 
share in the pleasures of intellectual pursuits. We need not 
fear that they will be less graceful, less natural, or less wo- 
manly ; but we may be sure that they will make wiser mothers, 
more appreciative wives, and more affectionate sisters. And 
here it affords me pleasure to extend, on behalf of the few 
educators in Liberia, and of the public generally, a hearty wel- 
come to a lady just from America, the daughter of a distin- 
guished leader of the race, who has come to assist in the great 
work of female education, and who honors us with her pres- 
ence on this occasion. 1 

In the religious work of the College the Bible will be our 
text-book, the Bible without note or comment, — especially as 
we propose to study the original language in which the New 
Testament was written ; and we may find opportunity, in con- 
nection with the Arabic, to study the Old Testament. The 
teachings of Christianity are of universal application. " Other 
foundation can no man lay than that which is laid." The 
great truths of the Sermon on the Mount are as universally 
accepted as Euclid's axioms. The meaning of the Good 
Samaritan is as certain as that of the forty-seventh proposition, 
and a great deal plainer. 

Christianity is not only not a local religion, but it has 
adapted itself to the people wherever it has gone. No lan- 
guage or social existence has been any barrier to it ; and I 
have often thought that in this country it will acquire wider 
power, deeper influence, and become instinct with a higher 
vitality than anywhere else. When we look at the treatment 
which our own race and other so-called inferior races have 
received from Christian nations, we cannot but be struck with 
the amazing dissimilitude and disproportion between the 

1 Mrs. Mary Garnet Barboza. 
4 



26 

original idea of Christianity, as expressed by Christ, and the 
practice of it by his professed followers. 

The sword of the conqueror and the cries of the conquered 
have attended or preceded the introduction of this faith wher- 
ever carried by Europeans, and some of the most enlightened 
minds have sanctioned the subjugation of weaker races — the 
triumph of Might over Right — that the empire of civilization 
might be extended ; but these facts do not affect the essential 
principles of the religion. We must gather its doctrines not 
from the examples of some of its adherents but from the 
sacred records. 

But even as exemplified in human action, notwithstanding the draw- 
backs to which I have referred, " it has so manifested its superiority," 
says Dr. Peabody, "in beneficent action, to all the other working 
forces of the world combined, that the experimental evidence for it 
under this head is oppressive and unmanageable from its multiplicity 
and fulness. ... It is in the exclusively Christian elements that the 
great workers of the last eighteen centuries have been of one mind and 
heart. No matter what their sphere of labor, wherever we see pre- 
eminent ability and success in a life-work worth performing, we find 
but the reproduction of the specifically Christian elements of St. Paul's 
energy, — a spirit profoundly moved in grateful sympathy with a lov- 
ing suffering Redeemer, a strong emotional recognition of human 
brotherhood, and a merging of self in the sense of a mission and a 
charge from God. ... If you were to take away Christian work and 
workers from the world, and destroy the vestiges of what has been 
wrought in Christ's name, I doubt whether those who now reject 
or despise the Gospel would think the world any longer worth liv- 
ing in." -^ 

Now this is the influence which is to work the great reforma- 
tion in this land for which we hope. This is the influence 
which is to leaven this whole country and to become the princi- 
ple of the new civilization which we believe is to be developed 
on this continent. It has already produced important changes 
notwithstanding its slow and irregular growth, notwithstand- 

1 Christianity and Science, by Andrew P. Peabody, D. D., LL.D. New 
York, 1875. 



27 

ing the apparent scantiness and meagreness of its visible fruits ; 
and it shall be the aim of this College to work in the spirit of 
the great Master who was manifested as an example of self- 
sacrifice to the highest truth and the highest good, — that 
spirit which excluded none from his converse, which kept 
company with publicans and sinners that he might benefit 
them, which went anywhere and everywhere to seek and to 
save that which is lost. We will study to cultivate whatsoever 
things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things 
are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report. If there be any 
virtue, and if tliere be any praise, we will endeavor to think 
on these things. 

Our fathers have borne testimony to the surrounding heathen 
of the value and superiority of Christianity. They endeavored 
to accomplish what they saw ought to be accomplished ; and, 
according to the light within them, fought against wrong and 
asserted the right. Let us not dwell too much on the mistakes 
of the past. Let us be thankful for what of good has been 
done, and let us do better if we can. We, like our predeces- 
sors, are only frail and imperfect beings, feelers after truth. 
Others, let us hope, will come by and by and do better than 
we, — efface our errors and correct our mistakes, see truths 
clearly which we now see but dimly, and truths dimly which 
we do not see at all. The true ideal, the proper work of 
the race, will grow brighter and more distinct as we advance 
in culture. 

Nor can we be assisted in our work by looking back and 
denouncing the deeds of the oppressors of our fathers, by per- 
petuating race antagonism. It is natural perhaps that we 
should feel at times indignation in view of past injustice, but 
continually dwelling upon it will not help us. It is neither 
edifying nor dignified to be forever declaiming about the 
wrongs of the race. Lord Beaconsfield once said in the House 
of Commons that Irish members were too much in the habit of 
clanking their chains on rising to speak. Such a habit, when 
it ceases to excite pity, begets contempt and ridicule. What we 



28 

need is wider and deeper culture, more intimate intercourse 
with our interior brethren, more energetic advance to the 
healthy regions. 

As those who have suffered affliction in a foreign land, we 
have no antecedents from which to gather inspiration. 

All our traditions and experiences are connected with a 
foreign race. We have no poetry or philosophy but that of 
our taskmasters. The songs that live in our ears and are often 
on our lips are the songs which we heard sung by those who 
shouted while we groaned and lamented. They sang of their 
history, which was the history of our degradation. They 
recited their triumphs, which contained the record of our 
humiliation. To our great misfortune we learned their 
prejudices and their passions, and thought we had their aspi- 
rations and their power. Now if we are to make an inde-_ 
pendent nation — a strong nation — we must listen _to__the 
songs of our unsophisticated brethren as they sin^ oOJjeir 
history, as they tell of their traditions, of the wonderful and 
mysterious events of their tribal or national life, of the achieve- 
ments of what we call their superstitions ; we must lend a 
ready ear to the ditties of the Kroomen who pull our boats, 
of the Pesseh and Golah men, who till our farms ; we must 
read the compositions, rude as we may think them, of the 
Mandingoes and the Veys. We shall in this way get back 
the strength of the race, like tlie gianFof tEe'ahdents who 
always gained strength, for tlie conflict with Hercules, when- 
ever he touched his Mother Earth. 

And this is why we want the College away from the sea- 
board — with its constant intercourse with foreign manners 
and low foreign ideas — that we may have free and uninter- 
rupted intercourse with the intelligent among the tribes of the 
interior ; that the students, even from the books to which they 
will be allowed access, may conveniently flee to the forests and 
fields of Handing and the Niger, and mingle with our brethren 
and gather fresh inspiration and fresh and living ideas. 

It is the complaint of the intelligent Negro in America that 
the white people pay no attention to his suggestions or his 



29 

writings ; but this is only because he has nothing new to say, — 
nothing that they have not said before him, and that they can- 
not say better than he can. Let us depend upon it that the 
emotions and thoughts which are natural to us command the 
curiosity and respect of others far more than the showy display 
of any mere acquisitions which we have derived from them, 
and which they know depend more upon our memory than 
upon any real capacity. What we must follow is all that con- 
cerns our individual growth. Let us do our own work and we 
shall be strong and respectable ; try to do the work of others 
and we shall be weak and contemptible. There is magnetism 
in original action, in self-trust, which others cannot resist. I 
think we mistake the meaning of the lines of the poet which 
are so often quoted, — 

" Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our lives sublime, 
And, departing, leave behind us 
Footprints on the sands of time." 

How shall we make our " lives sublime " ? Not by imitating 
others, but by doing well our own part as they did theirs. We 
are to study the " footprints " that when we are " forlorn " or 
have been " shipwrecked " we may " take heart again ; " not to 
put our own feet in the impression previously made, for by so 
doing we should be compelled at times to lengthen and at 
times to shorten our pace, sometimes to make the strides of 
Hiawatha and sometimes to crawl, — and thus not only cut a 
most ungainly figure, but accomplish nothing either for our- 
selves or the world. 

" Whilst I read the poets," says Emerson, " I think that nothing 
new can be said about morning and evening ; but when I see the day 
break, 1 am not reminded of these Homeric or Shakespearian or 
Miltonic or Chaucerian pictures. No ; but I am cheered by the moist, 
warm, glittering, budding, melodious hour, that takes down the narrow 
walls of my soul, and extends its life and pulsation to the very hori- 
zon. That is morning, — to cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of 
the sickly body, and to become as large as nature." 



30 



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019 655 166 9 



We have a great work before us, a work unique in the 
history of the world, which others who appreciate its vastness 
and importance envy us the privilege of doing. The world is 
looking at this Republic to see whether " order and law, reli- 
gion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of per- 
sons and the rights of property," may all be secured and 
preserved by a government administered entirely by Negroes. 

Let us show ourselves equal to the task. 

The time is past when we can be content with putting forth 
elaborate arguments to prove our equality with foreign races. 
Those who doubt our capacity are more likely to be convinced 
of their error by the exhibition, on our part, of those qualities 
of energy and enterprise which will enable us to occupy the 
extensive field before us for our own advantage and the advan- 
tage of humanity, — for the purposes of civilization, of science, 
of good government, and of progress generally, — than by any 
mere abstract argument about the equality of races. 

The suspicions disparaging to us will be dissipated only by 
the exhibition of the indisputable realities of a lofty manhood 
as they may be illustrated in successful efforts to build up a 
nation, to wrest from nature her secrets, to lead the van of 
progress in this country, and to regenerate a continent. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS \ 



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019 655 166 9 # S 



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HoUinger Co 
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Hollinger Corp. 
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